


help me make the most of freedom (and of pleasure)

by nosecoffee



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell, Hellenistic Religion & Lore
Genre: Canon Compliant, Eloping, F/M, First Meeting, It's a marriage of convenience because it's convenient to both of them, Marriage Proposal, Marriage of Convenience, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 14:51:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15997493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: nothing ever lasts forever*Her wet finger trails down his chin and jaw and neck, and stops where his shirt closes, tracing his collarbone. “What say you, King of the Underworld, to a bit of trickery?” She whispers, and smiles, slyly.Hades frowns, suddenly. “What kind?”





	help me make the most of freedom (and of pleasure)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" by Tears For Fears

He admits the boy tempts him. There’s something off about his beauty. The same way there’d been something off about Eurydice. Their youth makes them beautiful, but it also makes them dangerous, and Hades sees this. He saw this the first time he saw Eurydice in the forest, and the first time he saw Persephone, waist deep in the creek bordering her mother’s land, daisies twined through her hair.

Orpheus is beautiful, it is true, and he is so in love with Eurydice. Why else would he make the treacherous journey to Hadestown? But love, Hades knows all too well, fades after a time. Would this doom them to stay together just because he saved her from the Underworld? Or would it strengthen their relationship?

~

She can feel someone’s eyes on her back. It’s not that unusual for someone to accidentally stumble on her mother’s land. However, she’d prefer if they did it when she was fully dressed, and not taking a swim in the creek that borders her mother's back garden.

Kore keeps her back to them as she scrambles from the water, going for her discarded dress. She hides behind a tree, holding the fabric to her chest as she peeks around the trunk.

There, on the opposite bank of the creek, is a man. He doesn't look too much older than her, dark facial hair around his mouth, a smooth face. His hat is in his hand, the top few buttons if his shirt undone in the sweltering heat. He's wearing a full suit, and looks to be regretting it every second.

“I won't hurt you.” He calls to her, seeing her peeking. Kore squeaks like a child and hides, again. “I was just curious. I don't know you.”

Kore takes a deep breath, and steps into her damp dress, buttoning up the back. It doesn't have sleeves or much of a skirt. She cut those off a while ago. Now it's just green with straps up over her shoulders, coming down just above her knees.

“You wouldn't know me.” She calls back, and peeks around the tree, again. He's still on the bank, but he's removed his jacket. He looks like any other man from the market. He doesn't look like anyone she's ever known. _“No one_ knows me.”

The man quirks his head. He looks barely a man, but hardly a boy. There's still things boyish about him - the plush in his cheeks, the mud on his shoes, the bite to his nails. “And why’s that?”

Kore feels braver; she ventures out from behind the tree, nearly slipping down the slope, back into the creek, but catching herself on the branch of the tree she just abandoned as her hiding spot. When she recovers, she sees relief flood his features, and she almost laughs. “My mother ain't too fond of visitors, thinks they'll swoop me up and take me away. Don't think she's ready for me to leave the nest, yet.”

The man seems to consider this. “What's your name?”

“Kore.” She answers, simply, and carefully makes her way down the slope, her bare feet squelching in the mud of the back when she reaches the bottom. There are willows hanging around them, and for a moment her view of him is impaired by the vines.

“Kore?” He replies, almost a laugh in his voice, and it's so deep, so gravelly, she is too intrigued.

“I know.” Kore huffs, knowing that he must be chuckling over her rotten name. Life is hard for one with the name literally meaning _child._ “But there's nothing to do about a name. My mother wishes me to stay, so I'll stay.”

The man's tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth, and she is all too suddenly staring at his lips. Something about her makes her feel hot under her skin. “There's something quite deadly about you.” He informs her.

Kore cocks her head, and sinks into a crouch, mirroring his position, so that they are equals, like this. “What do you mean?”

“I mean everything you touch seems to ripen and thrive, and yet there is a scent of danger about you.” He gestures to where her right hand is planted against the mud to steady herself, and when Kore looks down she sees that flowers have sprung up between her fingers and around her palm. Just little wild flowers, seaside daisies that would surely die where she'd planted them. Poor things. Thriving now, but when she pulls away they'll choke on the gift of life she's given them. “Like any fruit that dared cross you would wither and any man who wronged you would die on the spot.”

“You’re wrong, sir.” Kore denies, even though she knows probably better than him that he's right. “I'm just a farm girl.”

“I think you're more than that.” He retorts, quickly, obviously meaning his words.

She realises she's trusted him far too much, far too quickly, and looks away from him, down at the water she'd been bathing in not too long ago. “Oh, yeah?”

“I think you come from my domain.” The man says, simply, shrugging.

Kore arches an eyebrow, unimpressed. “And which domain is that?”

“The Underworld.”

~

His creation and subsequent torture is not one he likes to dwell on. It’s a section of his life that he likes better to leave in the past, right where it should be, lying in the bottom of his father’s stomach. After all, he is the youngest of them, besides Zeus, so at one point he must have been on top, but by the end there, he’d found his way to the bottom of the pile of his siblings.

Hades supposes none of them ever cared all that much about him. He supposes that when they felt his weight suddenly on them they were too tired of it, that shoving him away, underneath was the best they could do for themselves.

And then, going from dark to light in such quick succession was too much for him, the triumph over his titan father sour on his mouth, so as soon as he had solid earth under his feet, and he retreated once more into the darkness. Let his heroic siblings battle it out for what they wanted, he didn't care.

Under the earth where everything was warm and cramped was where he felt comfortable. Hades didn't need light to see, his eyes were well accustomed to the dark, besides that. In the warm dark earth is where Hades found his home, after so long. Nothing could pull him away. He began work.

He built three places for souls to go after death, called the whole thing a grand name, and pronounced himself king. _He_ was in power, for the first time in his life, _he_ held the power, _he_ decided what went, and _he_ decided who deserved to be punished and who didn't.

Still, it was lonely work, creating a world of his own and yet being separated from the rest of it. Dirt could hold heat and could hold him close like the stomach of his father, his siblings squished to his sides in the silence and the dark, but it could never mimic their breaths and their sobs. It could never mimic their songs and whimpers and whispers of dreams and fears.

Hades sits in his throne and wishes for someone to sit beside.

~

Back then, her name is Kore. No one knows quite where she came from, but she emerged from the creek one day in a summer dress and flowers woven in her hair, and no one blinked in surprise when Demeter took this perfect summer child in as her own.

Some say she was always Demeter's, that those who didn't know were delusional fools. Some say she's Zeus's, daughter of some poor peasant woman and the most arrogant of gods, left to wander the earth, bringing warmth and ripe, sweet fruits with her.

Kore knows better. Kore is the daughter of a nymph and of a mortal man led astray, both in love with each other until the man died and the nymph bore his child. That nymph guards the river of the Death God's domain, Lady of the River Styx.

Styx let Kore go wandering, told her to come back when she wished, but only if it was what she truly wanted, and Kore found a path out from her mother's place into a creek in Demeter's back garden.

Demeter, hanging the washing and humming, saw this girl, flowers in her copper brown hair, water making her clothes soggy, light on her skin for the first time in her life, and saw her as the daughter she never had.

So Kore has two mothers, and she escaped the Underworld. Sometimes Kore wishes for it back, but, no matter how long she holds her breath under the water, the creek never swallows her back down.

~

It does not take much coaxing to tempt Kore. The girl is already curious of him, and already so prepared to rebel.

She is not frightened when she finds he is the Lord of Death, the King of the Underworld, in fact she just seems intrigued. Kore wades across the creek, uncaring of her damp dress becoming waterlogged, and crawls up to him, on her knees, effectively streaking her skin a deeper brown with mud.

She touches his cheeks so carefully, with the tips of her fingers, and strokes the softness of them. She traces the lines of his eyes and his nose, and the seam of his lips until he opens them for her and she slips her index finger inside.

It's almost like she's never known another person before. Never seen one, never touched one. Then again, Hades isn't sure he counts as a person, with how isolated he's been. How isolated he made himself.

(He supposes she must be quite isolated herself, with Demeter keeping her here, all to herself.)

She tastes sweet, her skin like the juice of a crushed apple, sugary on his tongue, yet there's a tang like poison, like rot. When she retreats he admits he misses her. The sun practically glows through her skin. She doesn't look human. She looks much more sublime than any other mortal he's ever seen.

Her wet finger trails down his chin and jaw and neck, and stops where his shirt closes, tracing his collarbone. “What say you, King of the Underworld, to a bit of trickery?” She whispers, and smiles, slyly.

Hades frowns, suddenly. “What kind?”

“My mother won’t ever see me as more than the child she took me in as.” She explains, and pulls fully away. “I want an escape and I think you can give it to me.”

“How?” He’s less wary now. He was right, there is a danger to her, but there’s no anger directed towards him. She does not wish to strike him down, he finds, she simply wants his help.

Kore glances over her shoulder at the house that is barely in view and swallows visibly. There is fear in that glance. “I want you to take me down to the Underworld with you.” Kore tells him, solemnly, as if she knows simply speaking those words is a rebellion.

Hades shakes his head, taking her hands with his own and hearing her gasp, softly, surprised by the contact. He surprised himself, truly. “But you'll die.” He says, still shaking his head.

“Nonsense. My real mother guards your precious river, I'll won’t die upon entrance.” She makes a move as if to tug her hands away, but she doesn’t. She sort of stares down at them for a moment, before looking up at him through her eyelashes, almost shyly. “If anything, I was born to rule by your side. If you won't steal _me,_ I may be forced to steal _you.”_

Those words sink in like a rock skipped on the surface of a lake. She's already made up her mind, this glowing girl with the wide eyes and the sly smile. This girl whose name calls her what she is, barely more than a child, is telling him in not so many words that she's going down, whether he likes it or not. “Let me think on it.” Hades all-but begs.

“Of course.” Kore says, pulling, fully, away, and giving him a strained smile. Hades can see more in her eyes. Her eyes say _come back quickly with your answer._ They say _time moves far too quickly for us to be hesitant._

~

Persephone drinks the memories away. The boy across the table with the lyre and the sweet voice helps her drown the foolishness and naïvety she'd displayed so openly when she was younger.

Hades doesn't understand. He still thinks they're the kids they were when they met, when she hid behind a tree to spare her dignity at being undressed, yet only days later stripped herself bare before him and fucked him into the field of flowers they laid in. He still wants to believe every morbid gift he gives her isn't another lock on the manacles chaining her to the Underworld.

Still, she resents the stories. Just because she and her husband fight doesn't mean she doesn't love him. She ate six pomegranate seeds before Demeter had Zeus intervene in their courtship and whisk her back to the Aboveworld. She meant to eat twelve.

What would Demeter have done, then? If her daughter had effectively condemned herself to the Underworld forever? What loophole would she have used? Would Zeus still storm into the grand house Hades had them set up in when she arrived, still half-cautious of each other, yet so in love, all hellfire and fury, demanding Kore come back to the surface with him, his large hand wrapped all the way around her wrist?

Persephone hears the stories. The abduction. The kidnapping. _The Rape of Persephone._

She was not raped. She was not abducted or kidnapped or stolen. And if she was stolen, it was mutual, and it was for good reason. These mortals who see only the resigned version of herself she cannot bleed in the Underworld don't know what it's like to endure rumours like these. To know that that gods themselves speculate over her marriage.

Persephone wasn't even her name, back then, and Demeter certainly wasn't her mother.

Persephone drinks these thoughts away and spins a little spell to let her poet crash right into a girl she saw dancing with the nymphs, not too long ago. She smiles when they blush.

~

The next time he sees her, she's leaning against a post in the wire fence that marks the border of Demeter’s land. Demeter would be enraged if he took away her daughter, whisked her into the darkness to be his queen. And yet that’s all Hades truly wants to do.

Her dress is still green, but it's a different cut, with buttons down the front, swishing against her shins, and proper cuff sleeves, hanging halfway down her biceps. She's wearing leather sandals and her hair is out, tangled with grass and twigs. Her appearance is disheveled enough for him to believe that she went rolling through the fields before coming to wait for him, here.

He stops a metre or two away from her, cautious like a spooked animal, like an untamed dog. Her eyes are watching him with a hint of amusement, her fingernails bitten down but still tapping against the wood post holding up the wire fence. There's always something between them.

“You came back.” Kore says, and almost sounds like she didn't think he would come back at all. She almost sounds like she thought she scared him off. A little trick with flowers doomed to drown the minute they sprouted wasn't nearly enough to scare him.

“Yes.” Hades agrees, and takes off his hat, swiping the back of his hand against his brow. He'd forgotten how hot it became in the Aboveworld, he always does. This heat is sweltering, and it wouldn't surprise him if the heat was coming from her. “Against my better judgement, I think.”

“Your better judgement told you I'm a silly child, I guess.” She says, frankly, looking down at her feet as if embarrassed.

“I admit, it did.” Hades says with warm cheeks. If only she knew how foolish he became when he saw her. Maybe then she'd understand why he came back, despite all that.

“But you don't care.” She says, suddenly looking back up at him. The wire of the fence strains against her waist, the material hanging there, as she's pressing towards him. “You came anyway.”

He nods. “I had to see you again.”

Kore nods in understanding, and asks, “Why?” She jumps the fence, and lands in the long grass he's standing in, on the edge of the shade of a tree.

“Because you were right.” The look on her face is so obviously taken aback by this statement and she doesn't bother to hide her surprise.

“About what?” Kore asks, curiously, and Hades breathes in deeply, dreading what had to come next. What if she refuses him anyway?

“You were born to rule at my side, you are the heir to the River Styx, my apparent equal.” He says to her and Kore watches him closely, taking in every inch of each expression he wears. She seems so much older now than she did on the bank of that creek. “You bring life, but you also bring death, you are mercy and cruelty, not only the embodiment of judgement but also the most beautiful woman I've ever met, clever, devious, and conspiring.”

“Have you simply returned to sing my praises?” She asks, almost laughing, but holding a seriousness in her eyes.

Hades swallows with some difficulty. “That and to ask you to be my wife.”

“Your wife?” Kore echoes, and Hades drops to his knees. She almost startled at his movement, but nothing has ever felt so right to him than staring up at her from where he kneels.

“And my queen.” Hades continues, reverently, tossing his hat aside. “Rule beside me, be my other half, I swear I'll provide.”

“I've no doubt of that.” She laughs, and taps him on the shoulder, gesturing for him to rise to his feet again. He's so close that he's almost completely pressed against her. They're breathing the same air. Now her smile shrinks, just a bit. “Are you sure?”

“More sure than I've been of anything in my life.” He says, breathlessly, as if proximity to her is diminishing the amount of oxygen he can bring into his lungs. Kore nods at him. Her fingers tremble, slightly, as she reaches for the first button on her dress. Hades’s hand catches it and they both freeze.

“What are you doing?” He breathes, confused.

Kore’s eyes flicker from his eyes to his mouth. “This is me saying yes.” She responds, and her breath smells like mint. “And my way of telling you to kiss me.”

Hades needs no more instruction. He leans in and captures her lips with his, his free hand pressing into her hip and back into the wooden post she's leaning on. To think he'd been frightened she'd change her mind. Kore quickly takes charge of the kiss, cupping his jaw with the hand she pulled from his and angling his mouth in a way that makes the kiss deeper.

When he pulls away she's breathless and red cheeked and grinning. She will marry him, she'll come down to the Underworld with him and rule beside him forever. He says the only thing he can think of, now, staring at her beautiful shining face.

“Let me lay you down.”

She wraps her arms around his neck and lets him take control. It's only after her dress has been discarded and she's surprised him by rolling them over, looming over him with a lazy grin that she whispers, “Call me Persephone.”

“For how long?” Hades asks her, and shivers as her bitten-down nails trail, gently, down the arch of his neck.

“Forever.”

~

She stands beside him as they watch the two lovers going. It's been so long since she's been herself with him, just being there, instead of shouting and screaming about how much she hates this place, now.

Persephone doesn't hate the Underworld, far from it, really, but she hates Hadestown and what it turns her husband into. She hates what the people there think of him, what they make her think of him. More gossip, more rumours. _He's a lecherous old man,_ they whisper in the mines. _He's a heartless king,_ others hiss, and sometimes Persephone sees that in him.

But she also sees her husband, trying to do what he promised. She sees the man she fell in love with, the man she agreed to marry in that field not so long ago. She loves him. She needs him to know that.

She takes his hand and hears his sharp inhale. His hand is so cold. Sometimes she wonders if he thinks he's alone all year round, even when she's there. She doesn't touch him enough, anymore.

“Wait for me?” Persephone asks, but it's more of a beg, now, she knows. She's begging him to let her come back, the same way he begged her to go. She's begging him for forgiveness, and begging for his apology too. She hopes he knows that.

Marriages are all about compromise, right?

“I will.” Hades whispers, and grips her hand tighter, in his. She rests her head in his shoulder and watches Orpheus and Eurydice disappear from sight.

 

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. If you liked this, please tell me all about in the comments and please leave me a kudos because those are greatly appreciated. Hmu on Tumblr @nose-coffee and we can scream about Hadestown together. I hope you enjoyed this. Again, thanks for reading.


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